When Does Frugality Constitute Stealing?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ethics of frugality lately. I often wonder when little tricks we use to save money crosses the line of ethical behavior and enters into the real of stealing. Three examples come to mind.
1. The Laundry Mat
My last apartment complex had a laundry mat that charged $1.25 to wash, and $0.75 to dry a load of laundry. If you emptied the dryer before the cycle stopped, you could put in a quarter to extend the cycle by another 20 minutes. The feature is ostensibly supposed to enable you to finish drying the same load, but I often used it to dry another load without having to pay the full $0.75. This meant watching the time so that I could get down to the laundry room before the dryer stopped. Since we would have spent $40 a month doing laundry, you could say that I reduced my laundry costs by 25% by literally short changing the dryer. But was this trick ethical?
2. The Movie Theater
We hardly ever go out to the movie theater because it’s so expensive. But we occasionally hit up the bargain theater for $2 Tuesdays to see an older release. The last time we did this, we spent $4 at the ticket counter, then another $15 to purchase two sodas and a bag of popcorn. So much for saving money!
I have friends who sneak snacks and sodas into the movie theater in order to save money. I once listened to an episode of the Dr. Laura Schlessinger show where Dr. Laura criticized a mother who smuggled snacks into the movie theater. Dr. Laura told the mom that she couldn’t get upset about her daughter lying to her if she herself was being dishonest with with the movie theater. Despite the fact that she’s a raging homophobe, I think Dr. Laura might have a point on this one. However, it’s hard for me to feel bad about cheating the movie theater out of $15 in concessions, when I can’t really afford to go to the movies in the first place. What about you? Do you think it’s dishonest to bring your own concessions to the movies?
3. Grocery Store Savings Card
My mom, my aunt, and I all share the same grocery store savings card, because we can accumulate points faster with three households using the card than we could alone. The store also sells gas, and you can get free gas after you spend a certain amount each month. Even if you don’t get enough points for free gas, you can still get a $0.10/gallon discount with the card. Plus you get coupons and a gift certificate for every $500 that you spend. By pooling our resources, we get those rewards much faster than we could if we each had our own card. But are we cheating the system?
What do you think: can frugality cross the line into stealing? If so, does it really matter? Will the Wal-Marts and Krogers of the world really be impacted by our actions? Or should we be concerned with the impact that our frugal tips and tricks can have on our karma? Does the universe really care if I save $10 by cheating the dryer? I’d love to hear your opinion.
All of them: Ethical.
1. The laundromat should simply charge $0.25 per 10 minutes or so. Then your clothes wouldn’t get over-dried, and you wouldn’t have to worry about timing the system. I wish I could do that with my machines, but I can’t get it timed correctly, and my towels are really too thick. If I ever figure it out, I could save $1.00 twice a month.
2. They are either getting the money for the movie, and I’ll bring my own concessions, or they won’t get any money. I don’t go to many movies anymore. Maybe two a year. I used to bring them, as a kid with my parents who are super ethical. They don’t even cheat on their taxes. But with a family of 4 kids, we would have just rented or watched tv.
3. This would not be an ethics question if you all lived together, so what’s the difference?
Great points, Tizzle. If I owned a $2 movie theater, I would kind of expect that my guests were going to bring their own snacks. They’re going to the bargain theater because they’re trying to save money, right? Or maybe I’m just trying to rationalize my actions.
We go to a bargain theater that actually has reasonable prices for snacks. 🙂 And we go fairly rarely. We don’t sneak stuff in, because we know that the employees and owners of the theater (it’s totally independent) are getting paid out of the snack money.
The dryer? I’ve never heard of one that works like that. I don’t know. The grocery thing? I don’t think that’s a problem at all.
I would just not eat snacks at the movie. Quandary avoided, plus you don’t end up associating junk food with entertainment.
Assuming there’s no fee for the grocery gift card, I personally think that one’s OK. I’ve tried to change the phone number on my grocery store discount card several times, but because I long ago lost the card itself, I haven’t been able to do it, even after bringing it to the store’s attention. They don’t seem to mind that whoever currently has the phone number is also racking up benefits on the same account, so I don’t think this one is a big deal.
This reminds me of a question I tossed around for a while regarding credit cards with rewards programs. If you use the card and pay the balance off every month, you make money from the card, and they never make money off of you. That doesn’t seem fair. That’s not an equal exchange of services. But I see nothing wrong with that. I feel the same way about the other things. If you’re smart enough and savvy enough to exploit little loopholes in the system, why not?
I suppose bringing snacks into the theater is more sneaky than savvy, actually. But I do it anyway. Come to think of it, I’m probably not the one to ask about ethical concerns.
All ethical. The dryer for sure.
The grocer as well. Usually, the cards are limited to one per househould. If you had three cards yourself so you could stock up on the limited sale items, that would be perhaps unethical. Kinda like it is unethical for the grocer store to always put the rotten fruit at the bottom of the package where you can’t see it.
The theater might be a bit of an ethical problem if they have signs posted prohibiting outside food and drink. Even still, on the rare occasions when I we go to the movies, I always bring my own food — because my family doesn’t eat the crap they sell in the theater.
@Jamie
Regarding your comment that the credit card companies don’t make any money off of you if you pay your balance off every month. That isn’t a loophole, it is the way the card company decided to set up the plan. So nothing unfair about abiding by the terms of a legal agreement.
And they do make money off of you. The merchants that you buy from pay anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 percent of every transaction to the card company.
The laundry thing is weird. Most I’ve been to that let you extend, just give you so many minutes a quarter. I don’t see the issue. I’d probably be switching it in and keeping it going just so someone didn’t grab the dryer.
The movie theatre I think is questionable because concessions are where cinemas make money. My understanding is that even at full price, the movie admissions themselves aren’t very profitable.
The rewards card? Are you all going to the store? Yeah? That’s exactly what they want.
Jamie — On the reward card and paying off the balance, the cc company will still make money on merchant fees. For every dollar you spend on a credit card at a store, the store only gets 95 cents or something. And when you get the rewards, a lot of them are a gift certificate (Amazon in our case) and the credit card company gets a discount for buying them in bulk. It works out for them. And it works out for us. Most of the rewards programs also have a maximum. I know ours does because we use one card for pretty much every transaction we do of any kind and usually max out rewards around September or October.
Thanks for all the viewpoints. It’s exciting to see so many comments on a Friday.
@ Jamie – I agree with what everyone else has said. The cc company is going to make money – they’re gangster thugs. So I wouldn’t worry about paying off the balance before they charge you interest.
@ Kathy – The theaters are definitely making bank on concessions. But honestly – $5 for a cup of soda? The cups themselves are the most expensive part of the inventory. But the prices theaters charge are outlandish.
@ BD – too shay. Yes, not eating any snacks would definitely eliminate the moral quandry.
How corporations (and banks) rip off consumers is the most unethical thing of all. As Kathleen says, when you know the business owners personally, you are going to make more of an effort to support their business, and abide by ‘the rules’. Buying local and supporting small business owners is the best way to fight the system!
Taking snacks to the cinema is fine. They sell tickets for admission to the film, you bought a ticket for admission to the film, no problem.
One test of ethics is “What would happen if everyone did this?”
If the cinema finds that they aren’t making enough money on popcorn, they can always raise ticket prices. Their business model is their choice.
Oceaneque – you present an interesting take on ethics. But I’m a little concerned that it’s too absolutist. For instance, what about war? The soldiers in a war kill people. If we use your standard and ask if it’s OK for everyone to kill, then we would have to conclude that the soldiers are acting unethically. Depending on your view of war, that answer may or may not be acceptable. I personally don’t think that war is ever acceptable, so I’m fine concluding that the soldiers are acting unethically. But then would you say that the soldiers need to be held accountable for their actions and brought to trial for murder? Maybe if we did we wouldn’t have wars, because people wouldn’t sign up for the military. But I think it’s a little much to ask a soldier to carry the ethical burden for killing someone in a war, since they’re not making the decision to go to war or how the war will be conducted.
As for everyday actions, like lying, I think that your model has merit. Should I lie to my partner about the outfit he’s wearing? Probably not, because lying is bad. But what if you were hiding Jews in your house during WWII and an SS officer came to the door? If you say that lying is wrong in all instances, then you would have to tell the SS officer that there were Jews in the house, which could lead to their death.
Call me a moral relativist if you want, but I think that ethical questions have to be contextualized, and we can’t say that something is 100% in all circumstances. That’s just my opinion, though.
With questions like this, I always look at who the provider is. If it’s a corporation, I don’t feel any guilt when I ‘get a little more’. If it’s, say, a small, family-owned business I not only pay full price. I often shop there even though it costs more than a discount place at the mall.
1. Laundry, not a problem. So many have actually taken my money that it’s nice to know that karma is balancing that out somewhere in the world.
2. The grocery store card, again not a problem. You are all shopping at their store, I think you both win on that one.
3. The movie theater is dishonest. I choose to go to a locally owned independent theater that has reasonable admission prices and reasonable concession prices. If I cannot afford the snacks I either do not have any or stay home and rent a movie. That truely is the way they make money and they do post signs. I like to support my local theater (hey they have real butter not butter-like topping).
Serena,
Interesting questions. I’d say #1 – totally ethical. The dryer is programmed/engineered in a certain way. If it happens that that engineering lends it self to your saving money if you’re committed enough to work the system, that’s the system. It’s like driving up to a parking meter and there’s 14 minutes left on it from the last person. You get the 14 minutes right up until the city figures out a way to clear the remaining minutes off a meter when the space senses that a car has vacated the space.
#2 – It’s such a hard one. I do it but yes, I think it’s dishonest and unethical. The movie theater has an actual rule about this. You (and I) hide the bottle of water and m&ms or whatever in a purse and you don’t like open the purse and grab your wallet and let employees see it. It sucks that the movie theater charges so much for candy (and also that they don’t carry dark chocolate m&ms) but it is the rules. One question that’s a short cut in determing ethics for me is “would I do this if my mother/the pope/the Dalai Lama/whoever… was watching?” Although… my mother certainly used to sneak food into the movies.
#3 – It sounds perfectly ethical to me to share the card. You are just racking up rewards quicker. But the % rewarded isn’t increased for spending more, right? If it was like you get 3% if you spend $400 a month but 8% if you spend $1000 then maybe that would be unethical because you’re using the grouping to earn a higher percentage. Question #2 I would ask is does the store specifically say that the card should be used only in one “family” or “household”? If so, you’re violating the intention. But I bet they don’t care so you’re good on that one.
Here’s one I do: My bus ride is $1.50 each way. The city used to have transfers so you get on your first leg and pay that fare and they give you a slip of paper that is good to get on another bus for the next 30 minutes. Now there are no transfers; there are “day passes.” You can get a day pass for a local route (.75 each way or $1.50 a day) or an express (my bus and 1.50 each way or $3.00 a day). The day pass is good for 24 hours EXACTLY. If I get on the bus on Tuesday at 6:59 (and sometimes I stand at he stop waiting until 1 minute before the bus leaves) I can pay $3.00 for a day pass. I ride home that night. Then get on the bus at 6:56 on Wednesday on that same day pass. I consider that totally ethical given that the day pass is good for 24 hours. The city hasn’t said that it’s a “round-trip” pass. It’s a day pass and I use it for a day.
What do you think?
Debra, your bus example is totally ethical – 24 hours is 24 hours. The LA and LB transit systems had a rule that the day pass expired at midnight. So if your system says 24 hours, then they’re giving you a free pass.
But why buy a pay each day – if you ride the bus that often, a monthly pass (if it’s available) would make it a lot easier, and I would assume cheaper.
Serena,
Oh I could (and have) go on and on about the bus passes and buying monthly vs. daily. I actually buy a discount ticket which makes the ride $1.20 per or $2.40 a day. A monthly pass is $31 which means even without the 24 hour day-pass trick, I would need to ride 13 days or more a month and I don’t always/usually do that. With the 24 hour trick, I can usually get 2 free rides a week which means it’s more worth it for me to use the daily discount passes.
What really stinks is that when the city raised bus prices last year they raised some fares by 50%. Others they raised by 100%. They raised express passes from $17 a month to $31 a month. And they raised the discount cards from being $5 for $10 worth of rides to $12 for $15 worth of rides.
Hi Serena, I think when you “play” using the rules they set is totally ethical, therefore the laundry and store cards examples are out of the question.
I admit that it is fun to have a good sweet during a movie, but consider that most big-chan movie theaters often offer a really BIG cup of popcorn and soda… well, how about if you don’t want a kilogram of pop corn and a gallon of coke, but just some rational portions? The M&M bags are always the biggest, and so on. What about if I enter the movie theater chewing gum, would that be in the same category? I dont think so. How about if you bring 3 or 4 “lemon drops” from home, just that… That would definitely not hurt businesses, even if is a small, independent movie theater. I guess common sense should guide us on this 😉
I rarely see movies in a theater, but when I do, I somehow survive 1.5 to 3 hours without eating snacks. I am surprised that this isn’t the most common answer. Ignoring that, if the theater has a “no outside food” policy and you bring in outside food, you are breaking the rules that are implicitly part of the contract you agreed to when you chose to buy a ticket and enter the theater. That is unethical.
For the dryer: You say “ostensibly” but how do you know what the intentions are of whomever sets the pricing scheme? If it’s stated somewhere visible, then yes, you are again cheating the system. If not, then guesses about why they have the pricing model they do are not a basis for ethical behavior. Maybe they have that pricing scheme as a way of discounting, a common retailer tactic to separate those who have more money than time from those who have more time than money. There’s nothing unethical about working within their pricing model.
Odd that the Bucks Blog on the NY Times posted a link to your argument about the ethics of sneaking snacks into a movie theater since this is an old post but here is my 2 cents worth on it. I am Type 2 Diabetic, no movie theater I know of in my local area sells sugar free candy. I can get sugar free soda but no low carb or sugar free diabetic friendly munchies. I have no issue sneaking my snacks into a movie theater since the movie theater chains care little about people with my dietary restrictions.